What: Student panel on racial slurs

Who: Sponsored by the Asian-American Association

Where: Charleston-Mattoon Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union

When: 3 p.m. today

The incident was embarrassing.

Eastern hosted a regional leadership conference for Asian-Americans – the Midwest Asian-American Student Union rotates its conference hosts from year-to-year.

As students from several area colleges walked around Eastern’s campus, a car drove by and the driver yelled at the group.

“Go back to China!” he screamed.

The episode led Asian-American students to want to do something about racial slurs and their effects on others.

The Asian-American Association will conduct a student panel on racial slurs at 3 p.m. today in the Charleston-Mattoon Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union. The panel is a part of Asian Heritage Month.

The panelists will share stories they have run into that have to do with race and racism.

Mieko Fujiura, an art history major and president of AAA, said the panel’s importance has increased since an on-campus racism forum Feb. 7.

That forum was a result of a letter to the editor in The Daily Eastern News Jan. 30 by Don Smith that referenced a Web site many people felt was racist in content.

Fujiura said the awareness of racial issues on campus has decreased since then.

“Things have died down but it’s still important to get a discussion on these topics,” she said.

Fujiura lives in Darien, a community that in 2000 had a minority population of nearly 16 percent. Charleston’s minority population was less than 8 percent. Both cities had a population just more than 20,000.

She said moving to a community with a smaller minority population was an adjustment.

“You encounter a lot of stereotypes,” she said. “You realize with stereotypes, you want to dispel them and try to work around them. It’s a very subtle form of racism.”

Fujiura said AAA sent out calls to other recognized student organizations to participate in the panel.

Five students, including Fujiura, are on the panel.

AAA’s adviser, Jinhee Lee, said minority students who move to a college town feel lonely and sometimes aren’t active enough in searching for organizations that might make them comfortable.

She said the panel should help students know that if problems with racial discrimination happen on campus, they can speak about them.

“(The panel will) let them know it’s OK to openly talk about it in a public discussion,” Lee said.